Scholarship Information

The scholarship is for students entering any year of their graduate training (i.e. M.Sc. or Ph.D.) during the typical residency period for their degree (i.e. 2 years M.Sc.; 4 years PhD). You are eligible to apply for the scholarship if you are accepted for M.Sc. or Ph.D. studies in a laboratory supervised by a full-time faculty member primarily appointed to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, The University of Western Ontario. You are not eligible if you already have held an OGGS award or if you hold external competitive personnel awards, or are successful in obtaining an external competitive award during the tenure of the OGGS scholarship (for example: OGS, NSERC, CIHR, CCSRI, Genesis Foundation, Heart and Stroke, Lung Association, March of Dimes, etc.). All scholarship holders must maintain a minimum of an 80% average on all course work to be eligible for the scholarship and to maintain the scholarship funding once awarded.

If you receive an Obstetrics and Gynaecology Graduate Scholarship (OGGS), you must comply with the following conditions:

1. You must maintain full-time registration in your graduate program during the tenure of the scholarship. If you withdraw from the approved program, transfer to part-time, fail to complete the year or graduate during the tenure of the scholarship, the Research and Finance Committees in the Department must be notified immediately.
2. You must apply for external awards for which you are eligible. Should you receive an offer of an external scholarship or studentship, you are required to notify the Departmental Research and Finance Committees before taking any action on the offer.
3. An acknowledgement of funding support from this program must be included in any publications directly resulting from the candidates work during the funding period.
4. It is the intent of this program to enrich the research activities throughout the department. It is therefore expected that the scholarship being awarded to the same laboratory in subsequent years will be unusual occurrences. These will represent important factors affecting the review process and would only be supported due to unusual circumstances such as limited applications in each year or due to an unusually high level of excellence displayed by the candidates of the proposed research programs.
5. The department reserves the right to not award the scholarship in any given year if finances do not allow it or no suitable applicants apply.

To be considered for the OGGS scholarship, the online application and supplemental documentation must be submitted to the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department on or before July 30th, 2023. The online application and supplemental documentation details are available under documentation.

Complete the online application: https://uwo.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0jpexj3yT88Cpr8 

Email the supplemental documentation by Friday, July 30th, 2023 at 5pm to Samantha Kreamer at samantha.kreamer@lhsc.on.ca:

1. Attach a full Trainee CV outlining:
   • Meeting presentations, abstracts, posters, publications (all authors for each type of citation must be included as well as meeting organization, location and journal name, volume and page numbers as applies), additional awards received, and relevant significant extracurricular, community, and leadership activities.
   • In the case that you have a paper submitted but not accepted, or submitted and in press, a letter of receipt or acceptance of the manuscript from the publisher must be provided. Do not include manuscripts in preparation.
2. Two referee reports:
   • One from the supervisor (1 page maximum) assessing the applicant. 
     • The following criteria are suggested: intelligence, motivation, originality, ability to communicate (oral and written), problem solving, judgment, background preparation, present ability at research, research potential and overall ability.
     • Please comment on the role of the applicant in publications resulting from research under your supervision.
   • A second from a professor that is familiar with the applicant's work, but is not the current supervisor (1 page maximum).
     • The following criteria are suggested: intelligence, motivation, originality, ability to communicate (oral and written), problem solving, judgment, background preparation, present ability at research, research potential and overall ability.
     • Please comment on the how long you have known the applicant, and in what context.
     •  
3. Transcripts of all grades obtained at any post-secondary institution (only 1 copy is required).
4. Provide a basic outline of proposed research including research rationale, hypothesis (objectives), experimental design and importance of expected findings (maximum 1 page, 12-point font size and 1-inch margins). It is highly advisable to have your research supervisor review this research outline.
5. A brief 2-page CV of the supervisor that includes research funding and publication focusing on the past 5 years.

All supplemental documentation must be submitted digitally via email. Please do not send documentation other than that required.

OGGS applications will be reviewed by the Obstetrics & Gynaecology Research Committee. Applications will be ranked by the Research committee and decision to fund will be made by the Finance committee. Supervisors of applicants that sit on the Research committee will not participate in the review process for that year. Only Research committee members without applicants in the competition will conduct the review. Results will be communicated to all applicants (successful and unsuccessful) and their supervisors shortly thereafter. Funds will be made available to support the successful graduate student for one year beginning in September 2021. Applications will be reviewed by considering the following criteria which have different weightings for MSc and PhD applicants thus allowing for a fair review of both types of applicants within the same competition.

All applications will be assessed based on the following criteria. The weighting for each component will vary between MSc, and PhD students due to the differences in experience and productivity between these groups of trainees as follows:

Each application will be assigned a numerical score based upon the above criteria and weightings and the applicants ranked based upon their scores.